The present invention relates to film processing methods, and more particularly, to a film processing method whereby, after plural exposed films in the form of film strips are extracted from their film cartridges and spliced together into a continuous series for developing, etc., troubled film strips having defects such as rips and broken perforations are detected and removed from the continuous series without adversely affecting the other film strips.
Before exposed film strips are subjected to developing or the like, it is necessary to splice them into a continous series of film strips. When a troubled film strip is found in the continuous series, it is necessary to remove it without adversely affecting the remaining film strips. Doing so, however, results in several problems.
First, when a troubled film strip is removed by cutting the splices formed at both ends thereof with splicing tape or the like and the remaining film strips are spliced together, the rear end portion of the preceding film strip is shortened by half the width of the splicing tape.
Secondly, removal of the splice formed by using splicing tape or the like makes it impossible to perform film identification. That is, before exposed film strips are subjected to developing or the like, it is essential to establish positive correlation between the film strips and customers. For this purpose, a method has been employed in which, in association with the film splicing operation, the same identification codes as those provided on DPE envelopes which identify the customers are printed on the not-exposed rear end portion of the film strips. Alternatively, a method has been employed in which the identification code of a film strip is marked on the splicing tape which is used for splicing each film strip to the succeeding film strip. However, in a series of film strips including troubled film strips, in both of these methods, the correlation for each film strip preceding each removed film strip is lost. That is, in the case where the method of printing indentification codes on the rear end portions of film strips is employed, when remaining film strips are spliced, the rear end portion of a film strip preceding a removed film strip is covered by the splicing tape, and in the case where the method of marking identifications codes on splicing tape is employed, the splicing tape on which the identification code was marked is cut and removed.